Virgin Records

VIRGIN RECORDS in Sheffield was one of the first dozen stores opened by Richard Branson, following the establishment of his original store above a shoe shop in Oxford Road in London in early 1971. A second shop followed in Notting Hill and then the name was rolled out nationwide, with a dozen new shops, though lots of music fans were already aware of the name thanks to their very popular mail-order operation which offered “5 to 15 bob off ANY album on ANY label” via full-page adverts in the music press, a discount made possible by the abolition of the RRP or recommended retail price (which had kept a level playing field for stores, and would arguably have meant we still had a thriving retail scene today if it hadn’t gone) in 1970.

I originally thought the Sheffield branch was open by the summer of 1971, in a new parade of low rise shops which had gone up on a largely derelict area still awaiting redevelopment following destruction in the war. The official address was 137 The Moor. It now looks as if it was more likely to have opened in 1973.

It was quite a basic affair but from the start the place had a cachet about it. There was certainly something a little risqué about the name, and the suggestive illustrations which sometimes decorated their window, which gave the store a grown-up feel. It was clearly a cool shop and very different to anything we’d seen before. They had joss sticks going. They had aircraft seats to lounge in, and they had big red headphones to listen to albums on while you lounged. They also had a clothing department upstairs to draw the girls in while boyfriends could trawl through the albums. Vinyl purchases were popped into smart white plastic bags, decorated with illustrator Roger Dean’s artwork (as a fan I actually hung on to some of my Virgin placcy bags and they’ve survived), which became the thing to be seen with at school – despite the fact that the black ink quickly rubbed off on your hands if you weren’t careful. Needless to say the Virgin staff were all almost unbearably hip. One fan still cringes on recalling the looks and smirks from behind the counter when buying a record they clearly felt wasn’t fashionable, but they knew their stuff, what was just out, and what was coming in soon.
By dint of the budget nature of the operation, the store was cheaply kitted out with record browsers knocked up out of untreated chipboard to begin with.

The air was often hazy due to the joss sticks and the window used to ‘fug up’ with condensation on busy winter days. After the Virgin record label began in 1973; artists like Mike Oldfield, Henry Cow, Hatfield & The North and Faust were heavily promoted in store as they emerged, often with 49p price offers, and free poster on the reverse side of their in-store catalogues. Virgin also promoted gigs at the City Hall, and even had a free concert to promote the album by Gong – in their back yard! We sat on the rubble and were amazed by the music of Planet Gong, particularly the work of the French keyboard player who had all the latest Moog synthesisers.

I can’t remember exactly which records I bought there in the early days, though I think I got Deep Purple’s Fireball album there in 1973 as I bunked off school after lunch and was pleased on entering Virgin to see they were just undoing the delivery boxes, and they told me I was the first person to buy the album.
One very popular feature of the store was the famous notice board, where local musicians like The Mirror Cracked and NWOBHM outfit Seventh Son would advertise for soul mates to form world dominating combos (Saxon in the latter’s case). This is the store today, which The Yorkshire Bank have taken over.

Virgin’s stayed at the bottom of The Moor for many years. I can’t recall exactly when they moved, probably in the early 1980s, first to a bigger store on High Street in a much more central area, then to the final location as a Megastore on Fargate. As promised, Richard, who posted about Virgin Records in Sheffield, has supplied us with more information on how he came to decorate the windows of three of their new stores.

“I was a Fine Art student in Leeds from 1970 to 1974. Virgin Leeds opened in December 1971 (at 20 Queen Victoria Street – it’s now been turned into an upmarket roofed-in arcade), and I got to know the couple running it pretty well. The shop window had twee paintings of pixies on it, and I told them I could do something better. So in spring 1972 I did a sort of stained-glass-effect portrait of Chuck Berry, about 8 ft high, based on the famous 1950s duck-walking photo of him playing his guitar (I have a photo of the painting somewhere, which I’ll send through if I can find it). The then head of Virgin Retail – Nik Powell – liked the painting and asked me to do a window for their new Virgin Imports store, a tiny shop just off Sloane Square in London. It was being run by Jumbo Vanrenan, a great guy who was a pal of Simon and Nick Draper (who would help found Virgin Records, home of Mike Oldfield, Gong, etc.). The London shop had a curved window on which I painted a black-and-white globe being circled by a plane marked Virgin. This was the summer of 1972

My third and final effort was the double image of Elvis on the window of Sheffield Virgin, painted in the late summer of 1973. I’m still certain that the shop had only just opened. After finishing at college I worked behind the counter in Leeds Virgin until summer 1976, then moved to Paris, where I’ve been ever since. I worked in a Paris reggae shop for a while, and designed a logo for another Paris record shop. From 1995 to 2005 I occasionally contributed to music programmes on French radio. Otherwise my only direct contact with music these days is hanging around in the dwindling number of record and CD shops…” My thanks to Richard for filling us in. Happily he has found the photographs taken of the Sheffield store. Steve Mandy was running toe store and according to Richard, Steve’s then girlfriend Clio had just finished filling the window with the clothing they sold upstairs. The upstairs was known as Virgin Rags for a time.

I thought I would try montaging Richard’s image into the scene as it is today, along with a trio of potential customers. Richard has also had fun trying to identify the sleeves in the window. On the right is Mott The Hoople “Mott” (the pink one), with Carlos Santana/John McLaughlin “Love, Devotion, Surrender” just above it. Love’s “Love Revisited” is the the chessboard-effect cover on the bottom left. I also recognised Who Do We Think We Are by Deep Purple and Hogwash by The Groundhogs above it. Indeed if we are right and the store did open in 1973 this could be the Deep Purple album I bought. I also got Hogwash, and still have both. Of course in later times this sort of large image would have been produced on vinyl for window displays, but Richard did a great job. Reflected in the window you can just see a car-park. This part of Sheffield was an old flattened bomb site from the war, and one of the last areas of the city to be rebuilt.

Virgin Records photograph courtesy of Richard. Please do not reproduce without permission.